1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a toilet for animals.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, an animal litter box that can be setup indoors has been used to handle excreta from animals kept indoors as pets. In recent years, an animal litter box has been developed that uses a double structure of an excreta container that houses litter to cover or harden fecal matter and a lower container disposed therebelow equipped with a tray that houses an absorbent sheet to absorb urine that passes through the litter, and is equipped with a hood that covers these containers.
Dogs and cats kept indoors as pets have an instinct to dig a hole after excreting, and a behavior of stirring litter laid down in the animal litter box. Therefore, having the aforementioned hood prevents litter soiled with fecal matter from being scattered about indoors. However, when removing fecal matter covered by the litter or cleaning the entire toilet of an animal litter box equipped a hood, there are the problems of having to insert a hand through the entrance provided in the hood of the animal litter box, or having to remove the hood altogether.
To solve those problems, an animal litter box was developed that has a rotatable hood installed on the excreta container that can be moved to open by rotating the hood. (See Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-121147, herein after referred to as Patent Document 1) The animal litter box described in Patent Document 1 has a large opening formed so that cleaning is easy without having to remove the hood.
However, it is necessary for a toilet equipped with a hood to be of a size large enough to ensure space therein for the animal to excrete. Furthermore, the hood described in Patent Document 1 requires adequate space above when the hood is opened. In addition to the space taken up by the toilet, space in a height direction is also necessary after the hood is moved. There is a problem in that locations where an animal litter box equipped with a rotatable hood is setup, as in Patent Document 1, require a wider space in the height direction than those that do not rotate.
In living environments where surface area is limited, such as in condominiums and the like, there is not always a wide space to spare for setting up an animal litter box. For that reason, an animal litter box is needed that can be setup in a space that is of the same degree as conventional toilet spaces, and that is easy to clean even if the hood is rotatable.